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Metro Health and Orthopaedic Associates of Michigan teamed up to form a new practice, OAM/Metro Sports Medicine. Courtesy Metro Health

A health care system is taking one of its partnerships to another level.

Combined practice

Metro Health in Wyoming said yesterday that it's partnering with Grand Rapids-based Orthopaedic Associates of Michigan to form OAM/Metro Sports Medicine, a comprehensive sports medicine practice.

Mike Faas, president and chief executive officer at Metro Health, said the purpose of the OAM/Metro Sports Medicine practice is to improve patient access and preventative care and to endorse healthy living through the partnership.

“The goal is really to provide excellent access and to keep athletes active and healthy, doing our best to work to actually prevent sports injuries, as well as treat them,” Faas said. “It is a team approach to the treatment process.”

The variety of services, number of access points, flexibility in staffing and increase in number of providers involved are reasons why the two organizations formed the sports medicine partnership, Faas said.

“It is functionality, and it is scope,” Faas said. “We both had large existing sports medicine capabilities that were very strong, but together, it was one of those old scenarios where one plus one equals more than two. We could see that the synergies that were going to be created by the two of us coming together were going to be tremendous.”

Sports medicine

The sports medicine practice will serve athletes at all levels of competition and people interested in maintaining an active and healthy lifestyle.

The OAM/Metro Sports Medicine practice will operate out of six locations: Metro Health facilities in Cascade, Allendale, Caledonia and Hudsonville; OAM at Leffingwell in Grand Rapids; and the OAM Metro Sports Medicine Center in the Spartan Stores YMCA in Wyoming.

OAM and Metro Health first partnered in 2010 to provide outpatient surgical care at the Metro Health OAM Surgery Center at MidTowne in Grand Rapids and again in 2013 to establish an orthopaedic center of excellence in the region.

The surgery center at MidTowne provides outpatient surgery to roughly 5,000 patients each year in four surgical suites.

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